Given employment to MBA freshers under Upadhi

Last week I have helped few guys and arranged interviews for them in various organizations where I have good contacts. Few of them got shortlisted and joined. All these guys are from rural back ground and below poverty line. I have done this under my dream project "Not For Profit - Upadhi", the idea to provide employment to the people in rural India.


Details below:

SL NO	Company	No.of     Selections	Qualification	Position Offered
1	Yashoda Hospital	7	MBA (Fin)	Exe-Auditing
2	CA firm	3	B.Com	Exe-Accounts
3	SVR Projects	3	D.Civil	Site Engineer

       
Since most of the companies are not ready to participate in public events like job fairs/Job melas, we have chosen few Engineering & Management colleges in semi urban areas and conducting campus selections to help students in those areas. Upadhi is completely a non profit bustle where we will not charge neither from companies nor colleges or candidates.

Till now I have helped more than 500 students with suitable employment under my charity activity. I request you to kindly support my vision of providing employment to youth in the rural areas. Please let me know if you have contacts in the industry to visit campus for selections. We have huge number of students from Graduation/BE/MCA/PG/MBA/Pharmacy etc. back ground. 

Regards
Ram K Reddy A
Email: ram.k.reddy@adrgroup.in

Resume screening. What should we check for in a resume!!

Dear HR Colleagues

Thought of sharing my knowledge on resume screening.

Resume is the best source for investigation of a guy's attitude and seriousness on his career. I usually consider the below parameters while screening the profiles. 

• Appearance of the resume. See format and approach.
• Focus: Prospective candidate should demonstrate on his career or job objective. The objective is specific and focuses on the needs of the organization.
• Spelling errors: More than two got immediately round filed. If you cannot even be bothered to spell-check your resume, you are not employable.
• Large employment gaps.
• Short periods of employment/too many jobs: Unless the positions were specified as contract positions, the person just looks like a job-hopper and or unemployable.
• Growing responsibilities from one employment to another.
• Check for accomplishments in his current and past employment.
• Check domain knowledge: Candidate will mention so many technical skills in his resume. Check his projects for these skills whether implemented or not. Also check for relevant domain experience.
• Consistency in educational percentage.
• Check email address which he mention in his resume. If the email id is unprofessional like "sexyram@xyz.com" or "hiremenow@xyz.com" or "anotherdayanotherjob@xyz.com" etc.

I may be missed out some more points. I request all of you to add your inputs.

Regards

Ram

 

ADR GROUP

Services: Infra & Fire Fighting| Property | Education | Product Promotion

Manager must be a coach to help improve performance of his team

If manager do not become skilled at coaching their team, it is doubtful that they will be able to attain the long term results not only for themselves but also their organizations. If a manager wants to be a leader, he or she must develop the ability to coach others. Coaching is an essential skill required by every successful manager in this new business era. Command or control leadership of managing team have gone long ago.

Coaching demands skill and time. Or I can say Knowledge and patience. Before playing a coach role managers must understand the purpose of coaching.

Let’s refer a quotation on leadership “Leader is not a person who can perform better than his team but the person who inspires his team to perform better than he can". This can be achieved exactly by good coaching. The objective of coaching is the same. In simple words, coaching is the act of helping his team to perform better.

Through coaching we can either target to develop entirely new skills or helping to improve the performance of a non performer or enhancement of existing skills. However, good coaching by managers will surely speed up the progress of employees and take their organizations a head high in the competition.

The question here is "why all the managers will not become coaches?" I see the below reasons.

1. They don’t understand the value of coaching.

2. Lack of skills.

3. Due to work pressure they may not get time.

How to overcome these barriers is the question. Here are the solutions.

1. Apply the rules on self: You cannot force the managers coaching responsibilities those whose attitudes always see "what is in it for me?"  So showcase them the success stories of managers or business man in their organization to seize the opportunity to learn how to become an effective coach. Once they understand "something in it for me" then they achieve stronger results through the efforts, they will understand results can be yield not from commanding the employees but from coaching others.
2. Coaching is compulsory: Tell the managers very clearly to take coaching as a basic responsibility to create a coaching organization. As I described, coaching required time and skill. So provide them to the managers.
3. Train the managers on coaching skills and make them to practice.
4. Assign a coach to every manager: I suggest organizations to assign a coach to every new manager on day one of his joining, as a part of induction. Practical course is more effective than class room training. He will experience the benefits of coaching and become more committed to the practice. If you don’t have coaches, hire external coaches to work with your managers.
5. Reward the best coaches: Managers who are top performers are obviously best coaches. Encourage them by providing challenging roles and reward them. Message goes to entire organization.

I am not a coach but stood as a successful manager and honoured with titles including leadership excellence award from President HR when I was working with Reliance Communication as a Head HR for Andhra Pradesh. Please leave your comments.

Regards

Ram

ADR Group

Services: Infra & Fire Fighting| Property | Education | Product Promotion

Why incentive programs in organizations frequently fail??

Have your past incentive programs been a disappointment to both you and your salespeople?  

Sales incentive programs under perform or fail as a result if elements of the technique are executed improperly. Often, incentive programs fail miserably because of innate complexities either in their recording and reporting systems or in how rewards are won. If you put the salesperson in a position where he or she is forced to assess "To get this, I first have to sell this, plus these and not these and they must include these," you are creating a recipe for confusion, sales frustration and failure. In the end, the incentive program becomes a disincentive!

The monetary values of incentives are often not the critical factor in motivating salespeople to succeed. In my view, the money and the goodies were not primary motivation and not all salespeople are motivated the same way. Consequently, not all incentive programs work. Why is that?

The remedy? There can be no ambiguity. Anything less will result in a lack of interest, as well as a waste of time and money that can sometimes spill over into other departments whose task it is to administer and account.

From my experience, I'll make the following observations:

1) The 70-30 Rule: Thirty percent of the salespeople make seventy percent of the sales and profits. Too often, sales incentives - perhaps in an effort to be fair - are geared to the entire sales force. Enlightened marketing strategists know that the top thirty percent are already motivated. Simply put, a strategy that's geared to light a fire under the next thirty percent - the next logical group - doubles the business in a more cost efficient manner.

2) Salespeople by nature are like electricity. They naturally take the path of least resistance. That's not to say they are lazy or untoward. In fact, it's just the opposite. Good salespeople look to simplicity to make things happen.

3) Edison may have invented the light bulb, but it never went anywhere until a salesperson understood its benefits and made the first sale… and probably sold a lamp to go with it! Incentive programs don't just sell themselves. Too often, expensive motivational programs are overlooked in the field because representatives either don't understand their value and/or are unsure how to sell them. Many times, good incentive programs are written off as having missed the target, when in reality, they just weren't rolled out and managed properly.

4) Reward: Any reward-value can become an unmotivated, anticlimactic activity if the time span between winning and getting is too long. Successful incentive programs reward immediately! As a rule, the faster the reward is delivered, the greater the enthusiasm for the incentive program.

Although on some levels, salespeople are a complex breed, when it comes to incentives, they are - for the most part - quite predictable. Their nature is to react to excitement or challenge faster than most, and then move on. One way to maximize their natural bent and ensure greater program success is simply to cater to their natural motivators. "Get them their stuff QUICKLY!"

I have noticed huge attrition in the sales division in one of my previous organizations though attractive incentive policies were placed just because of this reason.

5) Recognition: At the risk of making salespeople appear shallow or monolithic (they are not), recognition amongst their peers is still the typical motivator, whether there's an incentive program or not. The rule again, is, there is no such thing as too much recognition! Salespeople by nature gravitate to the limelight much like other performers, and so there should be no shortage of achievement and overachievement recognitions that find their way - in a timely manner - to the public's eye.

Another fact that is frequently overlooked is that recognition, whether part of an incentive or not, is the least expensive means of motivation. In many cases, it's free! Often, shaking the hand of the president in front of the company is all it takes to galvanize the need to overachieve.

The Bottom Line: Manufacturers and Distributors must take greater care when designing motivational incentive programs. Find out what they want, then, give it to them. But make sure to keep it simple, keep it clear, promote it properly, reward immediately, don't try to target everybody, and, recognize, recognize… RECOGNIZE!

Regards

Ram

ADR Group

Services: Infra & Fire Fighting| Property | Education | Product Promotion

Enquire on ram.k.reddy@adrgroup.in for any kind of support on the above services.

Difference between Business HR & Conventional HR

Corporate HR and Business HR are terms used to distinguish area of operations. In organizations which are concentrated on single core business the terms are one and the same.

There has been an increasing awareness in the past decades that HR functions were like an island for cool comfort jobs which are far away from the hard world of real business. In fact I have received many such comments on this from colleagues who were headed departments like Sales, IT, Finance, Customer care etc. In order to justify its own existence HR functions had to be connected with the strategy and day to day running of the business side of the organization.

Here is a small attempt to distinguish between Business HR and Traditional HR. Actually, the question behind writing this small article is “what roles can be identified for the current day HR department in the context of increasing globalization of the corporate domain?”

I used to perform the below KRA in previous organizations apart from the conventional HR operations. I introduced new revenue models in my previous organizations, increased profit ratio, enjoyed the pressure too and stood as a successful leader. Often, I happened to receive a query from HR community that “why not a CEO from HR background?”. Who will stop you if you handle the below KRA.

Business HR:

·    The primary goal of Business HR is to increase employee productivity by focusing on business obstacles that occur outside of human resources.

·   The primary actions of Business HR are to identify key HR areas where strategies can be implemented in the long run to improve the overall employee motivation and productivity.

·  Ensuring Effective Manpower planning, recruitments, training & skills development, provide effective supervision and leadership, grievances handling and retention of team.

·    Plan and direct the organization’s activities to achieve stated/agreed targets and standards for operational, quality, culture and statutory adherence.

·       Review and report performance / progress of the organization on a regular basis & ensure the efficacy of System.

·  Examine the functional operations and identify profit improvement / cost reduction opportunities.

·         P & L responsibility.

·    Maintain and develop organizational culture, values and reputation in its markets and with all staff, customers, suppliers, partners and regulatory/official bodies.

·         Engage, Build and maintain effective long-term relationships with key members of the client team and discussing future Trend in Operations.

·       Create cross-functional project teams to encourage team building & employee development in terms of Knowledge & Skills.

·  Conducting continuous audits on MIS to ensure compliance and sound functioning of the process.

Corporate HR:

Corporate HR can play a significant role in monitoring the implementation of corporate HR policies throughout subsidiaries. HR can thus become "Champions of processes", building commitment of top management, providing training for managers and monitoring these processes. Corporate HR has a social responsibility to ensure future leaders are sensitive to and equipped to deal with global challenges. This creates a new role for HR as ‘guardian of culture’, overseeing the implementation of global values and systems.

However in a diversified organisation there may be need to have Corporate HR and individual SBU or Business HR as each business may need to have unique business requirement.

When Organisations grew and they could see the visible impact of good HR practices in their bottom line, they wanted HR to reach out to where the business is, rather than be restricted to cool comforts of corporate Office. Both are one and the same for a small company where there is only one HR dept but for a large organisation which has large geographical spread or multi business environment, the HR team at the Corporate Office would be called Corp HR and the HR presence in individual businesses would be called Business HR.

For Ex. Recruitment strategies are handled at Business HR level and hiring also happens there. There is a small team of senior recruiters at corporate office to handle corporate openings. However, Rewards are managed centrally. Salary structures, annual increments guidelines etc are all planned at corporate level. Payroll processing is at corporate level however entry is done at business level. Training is handled at business HR level however succession planning is done at corporate HR level.

Please add your suggestions in the same page as the viewers of this page also read the same.

Regards

Ram

Ram.k.reddy@adrgroup.in

Differences between Jan Lokpal Bill and Govt Bill

The streets are witnessing a demand that the government's Lok Pal Bill be replaced by the Jan Lok Pal Bill (JLP) as drafted by the team led by Anna Hazare. There are several significant differences between the two bills. In this note, we describe the some of these differences.

First, there is a divergence on the jurisdiction of the Lok Pal. Both bills include ministers, MPs for any action outside Parliament, and Group A officers (and equivalent) of the government. The government Bill includes the Prime Minister after he demits office whereas the JLP includes a sitting Prime Minister. The JLP includes any act of an MP in respect of a speech or vote in Parliament (which is now protected by Article 105 of the Constitution). The JLP includes judges; the government Bill excludes them. The JLP includes all government officials, while the government Bill does not include junior (below Group A) officials. The government Bill also includes officers of NGOs who receive government funds or any funds from the public; JLP does not cover NGOs.

Second, the two Bills differ on the composition. The government Bill has a chairperson and up to 8 members; at least half the members must have a judicial background. The JLP has a chairperson and 10 members, of which 4 have a judicial background.

Third, the process of selecting the Lok Pal members is different. The JLP has a two stage process. A search committee will shortlist potential candidates. The search committee will have 10 members; five of these would have retired as Chief Justice of India, Chief Election Commissioner or Comptroller and Auditor General; they will select the other five from civil society. The Lok Pal chairperson and members will be selected from this shortlist by a selection committee. The selection committee consists of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, two Supreme Court judges, two high court chief justices, the Chief Election Commissioner, the Comptroller and Auditor General and all previous Lok Pal chairpersons.

The government Bill has a simpler process. The selection will be made by a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the leaders of Opposition in both Houses of Parliament, a Supreme Court judge, a high court chief justice, an eminent jurist and an eminent person in public life. The selection committee may, at its discretion, appoint a search committee to shortlist candidates.

Fourth, there are some differences in the qualifications of a member of the Lok Pal. The JLP requires a judicial member to have held judicial office for 10 years or been a high court or Supreme Court advocate for 15 years. The government Bill requires the judicial member to be a Supreme Court judge or a high court chief justice. For other members, the government Bill requires at least 25 years experience in anti-corruption policy, public administration, vigilance or finance. The JLP has a lower age limit of 45 years, and disqualifies anyone who has been in government service in the previous two years.

Fifth, the process for removal of Lok Pal members is different. The government Bill permits the president to make a reference to the Supreme Court for an inquiry, followed by removal if the member is found to be biased or corrupt. The reference may be made by the president (a) on his own, (a) on a petition signed by 100 MPs or (c) on a petition by a citizen if the President is then satisfied that it should be referred. The President may also remove any member for insolvency, infirmity of mind or body, or engaging in paid employment.

The JLP has a different process. The process starts with a complaint by any person to the Supreme Court. If the court finds misbehaviour, infirmity of mind or body, insolvency or paid employment, it may recommend his removal to the President.

Sixth, the offences covered by the bills vary. The government Bill deals only with offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The JLP, in addition, includes offences by public servants under the Indian Penal Code, victimization of whistleblowers and repeated violation of citizen's charter.

Seventh, the government Bill provides for an investigation wing under the Lok Pal. The JLP states that the CBI will be under the Lok Pal while investigating corruption cases.

Eighth, the government Bill provides for a prosecution wing of the Lok Pal. In the JLP, the CBI's prosecution wing will conduct this function.

Ninth, the process for prosecution is different. In the government Bill, the Lok Pal may initiate prosecution in a special court. A copy of the report is to be sent to the competent authority. No prior sanction is required. In the JLP, prosecution of the Prime Minister, ministers, MPs and judges of Supreme Court and high courts may be initiated only with the permission of a 7-judge bench of the Lok Pal.

Tenth, the JLP deals with grievance redressal of citizens, in addition to the process for prosecuting corruption cases. It requires every public authority to publish citizen's charters listing its commitments to citizens. The government Bill does not deal with grievance redressal.

Given the widespread media coverage and public discussions, it is important that citizens understand the differences and nuances. This may be a good opportunity to enact a law which includes the better provisions of each of these two bills.

-Courtesy IBN

Launching "Upadhi" in Prakasam District, AP

Not-For-Profit – Upadhi

Mission: Aiming for better society through our vision of providing employment for people in rural segments.

To support our mission statement, we began with the idea of linking rural youth to job opportunities in Indian corporate and development-sector organizations. As a part of this noble cause we have taken Kurnool district, AP for a pilot project and initiated a program called “Upadhi”. Since its inauguration in April 2011 we have placed more than 600 candidates through various job fairs conducted under this project. All these candidates are from rural areas and financially weak families. 

Upadhi is completely a nonprofit bustle where we will not charge any service fee neither from the government nor candidates or industries. From the perspective of the Indian economy, more jobs mean a contribution to GDP, more foreign exchange, more raw materials for industries, more manufactured goods and more services. Hence, employment for the rural youth has the potential to provide momentum to the giant wheel of the economy.

All able bodied un-employed persons in the 21 to 45 years age group of the local population shall be compulsorily enrolled to form human resources units in every Village / Panchayat. Enrollment shall be an incessant progression. And employment could be for any level i.e., a software engineer, medical, an MBA, nurse, pharmacist, carpenter, plumber, security guard, sales force, warehousing assistant, driver, etc.

With the confidence gained from the success and series of activities done earlier, we are now expanding our activity to Prakasam District basing at Kandukur town, Andhra Pradesh. When I was looking for a helping hand to make this program successful in Prakasam District, Mr. Srikanth has assured his kind support in terms of Finance, Hospitality & Infrastructure. Mr.Srikanth will announce the inauguration date in a press meet very soon.

Project Mentors:

Mr.Srikanth Chowdary Kancharla: A young Engineering graduate, A visionary leader started his career with CMC and then served major corporates for more than 6 years. Presently he is a Director at Prakasam Engineering College, Kandukur, AP. His vision and the values he believe in were made Prakasam Engineering College to stand as one of the best in AP. He is highly dedicated to the people of rural background in developing their skills and making them Industry Ready and placing them in different verticals.He was honored with "NTR Seva Award" from Honorable Governor Mr.Narsimhan, Andhra Pradesh for serving the flood affected areas at Kurnool, Organized by NTR Trust, Hyderabad.He is a member in CII,CSI and IEEE.

Ram K Reddy A, HR Business Partner: Ram has more than 15 years of experience in organizations leading the HR function. A hands-on experience as the Strategic HR and SBU Operations Head has helped Ram to polish his skills in the area of People Management. He has been associated with the organizations like Reliance ADA Group, Mind Source, Optimal Minds etc. He holds a Masters in Business Administration (HR) and PGDM in HR. He was honored with “Leadership Excellence” award from President HR, Reliance Communications. 

Rural India is the heart of the nation. If it functions well, the country flourishes.

Let us reach the untapped potential.

Write a mail to ram.k.reddy@adrgroup.in for further details.

The Top 5 Interview Questions That Employers Should Always Ask

Making a decision on whom to hire during the job interview process isn’t an easy task. Finding and hiring the best candidates starts with asking the right interview questions. I never miss to ask the below questions to assess the job applicant whether he is a strong potential hire.

1. We all make mistakes on the job. Share with me 2 mistakes that you have made in your current or past job. How did you resolve these mistake(s) and what did you learn from the mistake?

Reason to ask this question: You can check their ability to acknowledge that they have made mistakes. You can check their ability to problem solve, fix mistakes, make decision under stress and whether the mistake became a learning experience or not. Also we can understand whether he can do better job when faced with a similar situation in the future.

2. If I were to contact your current supervisor/colleague today for a reference, what would he/she say about your work performance and commitment to the job?

Reason to ask this question: You can check his honest and his self-awareness on his work done.

3. What is your long term objective? Share with me 3 activities you do in a day to achieve your goal?

Reason to ask this question: Working without keeping a goal for life is equivalent to missing a heart in human body. This question will help us to understand whether the candidate does a goal in his life and how they in line their daily schedule towards it.

4. How does your past and current work experience that makes you the best fit for this position?

Reason to ask this question: This question requires the job applicant to give real life examples of their specific experience and skills sets and how this experience can be applied to the job that you are hiring for.

5. What is your life’s philosophy?

Reason to ask this question: We can predict his behaviour in the organization based on the philosophy he has adopted in his life.

Upadhi Jobfair - Wipro selections & Photos

We have done a job fair on 26th July 2011 at Nandyal Taluk, Kurnool Dist, AP exclusively for B.Sc/BCA 2011 passed outs under "Upadhi" program which is a non profit charity activity to help the rural youth.

Details Below:

Number of students appeared in the Aptitude Test: 76

Number of students cleared the test: 22

Number of students cleared in HR round Interview & offered: 10

All these 10 students will join with Wipro after completion of formalities in 10 days. They will be trained by Wipro on various technologies and start working on various applications. And also simultaneously they will do an MS program from BITS PILANI at free of cost.

All the selected candidates are from farmer families and financially weak. I am really thankful to Wipro management and Wipro HR team Mr. Sunil, Mr. Narendra & Mr. Yaswanth for their kind support extended to help these rural students by giving them employment.  

Regards

Ram

Best Mass Hiring Practices - My success story

Organizations face unique challenges when they must hire massive numbers of individuals. Organizations should shun opening large facilities requiring thousands of employees in places where there are low population rates. Local unemployment rates can play a key aspect in the success of firms’ mass recruitment efforts. To keep the recruitment momentum on, they must implement variety sourcing strategies and develop sufficient databank.

I am listing some of the innovative and low cost sourcing strategies designed and implemented by me that are reduced cost per hire up to 800% in my previous organization RADAG. This has been resulted in managing more than “16,000 walk-ins in 2008-09”, “20,000 walk-ins in 2009-10” and over “30,000 in 2010-11”. Most of these walk-ins for vacancies in Customer Care, Tele-calling, Frontline Sales, Networking Engineers, BPO, Insurance Sales Officers, Corporate Sales Executives, Engineers etc.

Sourcing Techniques:

·         Job fairs through District Employment Exchanges (Free of cost).

·         Job Fairs through Rajeev Udyogasree (Free of cost).

·         Job Fairs through Community Associations & NGOs (Free of cost).

·      Job Fairs through “School of Employability” agencies like NIIT, NIS Sparta etc. (Free of cost).

·      Campus Recruitments (Free of cost. Colleges used to arrange Transportation and Accommodation).

·         SMS Blast through company’s Bulk SMS division (Free of cost. We used to send SMS to Pre paid/Post paid customers with vacancies details every month).

·    Pamphlets distribution (Free of cost. We used to keep a leaflet along with mobile bills).

·           Pamphlets distribution through news papers (Very low cost method).

·         Field Recruitment Activities through Field Recruiters. Their duty is just to head hunt sales force from targeting competitors. Every field recruiter has to get 120 people on boarded every month. (Very low cost method).

·       Free Job postings on job portals (Free of cost. There are few websites where we can post at free of cost).

·        Collecting two references from every candidate who attends the interview (Free of cost).

·      Keeping Kiosks at crowded and residential areas through field recruiters (Very low cost method).

·         Internal Job Postings.

·         Social Media Networking (Free of cost).

·   Implemented “Hiring as Teams” method extensively rather than taking individuals. (Free of cost).

·         Pre-placement offers (Free of cost).

·        Poster activities in crowded areas, business centres, cyber cafes etc. (Very low cost method).

·      Pre induction by the HR Managers to increase the turn up ratio. This is one of the best practices I have introduced and implemented.

What can be done more?

1.       Develop own job portal and make it popular through social media.

2. Collect list of village Panchayat officers and their addresses and post employment news.

3.     Post employment news letter to colleges.

4.    Recruit social media experts, create blogs, join the groups, publish articles and create a brand.

5.     Network with placement agencies who can offer services at lower price.

6.   Reach untapped potential in semi-urban areas. Correlate network in depth to District, Taluk and Mandal levels.

7.     Mass mailing within permissible cyber law.

Friends, you can add your ideas. Please write a mail on ram.k.reddy@adrgroup.in.

-Ram